Cooling Performance Comparison of a Low Aspect Ratio Incremental Impingement Pin-Fin Channel Configurations

The effective use of coolant in maintaining gas turbine components below failure limits is becoming increasingly necessary in view of increasing combustor exit temperatures. Incorporating coolant impingement in a pin-finned channel provides an avenue for increased heat transfer. Two types of cooling configuration are modeled and compared: case 1: with the jet impinging in a cut out region behind a pin-fin (thus sheltering the jet from crossflow effects), and case 2: with the jet impinging further downstream along the next row of pin-fin and downstream of the wake region of the upstream pin-fin. In the current work, a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) study is conducted for a Reynolds number of 7500. All other geometrical and flow parameters are kept similar in both the configurations to enable a direct comparison. Since the stagnation point Nusselt number is not affected by the cross-flow in the sheltered configuration, there is enhanced cooling as compared to the configuration in which the jet impinges further downstream and is not protected from the crossflow. In this paper, the flow field, the jet-crossflow interactions and the heat transfer behavior are discussed for both the configurations.